Drown
by xoxfiresignx
Summary: Zuko is the Fire Lord in a period of civil unrest; Katara has become the most powerful waterbender in history.  Zuko's life is constantly in danger; Katara is strong enough to protect it.  Zuko can't trust anyone; Katara can't trust herself.  M for themes
1. Splash

**Drown**

_Zuko is the Fire Lord in a period of civil unrest; Katara has become the most powerful waterbender in history. Zuko's life is constantly in danger; Katara is strong enough to protect it. Zuko can't trust anyone; Katara can't trust herself._

a.n.

This started as an idea that didn't quite fit into my 'What if' fic, since it's a 'what if' scenario that takes place after the series has ended.

I don't own ATLA.

Blah blah blah.

* * *

**.01.  
****.Splash.**

"Katara, give up. You can't heal him. No one can." Mai's voice was quiet and filled with tears. She stood beside the bed where her fiance lay, unmoving, with the waterbender crouched above him. The healing glow faded from the latter's hands and she glared at the other woman with an expression of absolute hatred.

"Shut up," she growled, her eyes narrowed in anger. "Give me a knife."

"What?" Mai took an involuntary step away from the bed, clutching fearfully at the sleeves of her intricately-embroidered robe.

"I need a knife. I can heal him, but it'll be faster if you give me a knife." Her arm snapped out with the speed of a cheetah-viper, her outstretched hand stopping inches from Mai's.

"Why do you need a knife?"

Katara let out a sound that was very much like a feral snarl. "Just trust me, Mai! We don't have time for this!"

The Fire Nation noblewoman hesitated for a fraction of a second longer before slipping a stiletto blade smoothly out of the special pocket she had sewn into her sleeve. The minute the cold steel touched her skin, Katara curled her fingers around it in a firm grip and brought it slashing down into the prone man's pale forearm.

Mai screamed as blood came rushing from the wound, darkly black, thick as midnight. She jumped towards the blue-eyed woman, more blades appearing like magic in her hands - but she had barely moved a foot when she found herself encased almost entirely in ice. She struggled against her frozen bonds, but to no avail: she was nowhere near strong enough to crack the ice. And even if she had, the waterbender was stronger than she was. Katara hadn't even looked up.

"You bitch!" Mai shrieked, deciding to use her voice to the best of her advantage. "You horrible, evil witch! You peasant! You -" Her screams cut out abruptly as the ice snaked up and covered her mouth, preventing her from continuing her furious diatribe.

"I really need to concentrate here. Breathe through your nose and you'll be fine." She spared enough time to send the frozen woman a condescending glance before turning her attention to the blood now spilling into her hands.

She coated her hands with it, feeling the push and pull of the water. Her vision blurred as she focussed all of her attention and power on the red, sticky liquid. It looked more purple than red in the flickering firelight - at least, until it started to glow. Slowly, the plasma turned from scarlet to a blinding, vibrant white-blue. She positioned her hands over the wound she had made, the knife lying somewhere on the floor where she had tossed it, forgotten. She took a deep breath, centering herself, feeling the power flowing down to her hands and pooling there. The pressure grew and grew, like a dam about to burst, and at the last possible moment she released it, sending it coursing into the body below her.

The blueish glow sped into him like a flame over dried grass, spreading through his veins and through his torso, into his limbs. The light shone through his skin, illuminating him in an ethereal way. His body was lifted a few inches off the bed and the glow intensified. It got stronger and stronger until he was obscured completely in a haze of angelic radiance.

Then the light faded and he fell back onto the bed with a soft _thump_. Mai suddenly found herself able to move and speak again as the ice melted away from her, back into the various vases around the room it had been taken from. Katara kept the smallest amount, pressing it to the gory slit in his arm. Under her careful ministrations, the gash closed itself up and disappeared, leaving a patch of slightly newer skin behind it.

Then the world went black and she collapsed, falling backwards off the bed. Mai caught her at the last second, heaving her unceremoniously back onto the plush material.

Slowly, painfully, a pair of golden eyes opened.

* * *

She awoke to the feeling of being watched. Any other time, she would have attacked immediately, freezing her assailant in a block of ice and demanding to know what they thought they were doing; but the slow, steady breathing of her watcher kept her calm. She knew who it was.

She rolled onto her back and opened her eyes. Shining golden orbs greeted her, the edges tilted up in a smile. Even the one that was scarred beyond repair.

"Hey," she mumbled, smiling back. Her body felt weak and empty, as though someone had taken all her muscle, ligament, tendon, and bone, and replaced it with fox-goose feathers.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, smoothing her hair from her forehead with one careless hand.

"Hey yourself."

"Good to see that you're better."

His smile grew and he rolled his eyes. "No thanks to you. Geeze, Katara, couldn't you have helped at least a little bit?"

She snorted feebly, sticking her tongue out at him. "Yeah, next time I'll get right on that."

"Mai told me what you did." His voice was serious now, though the smile was still in his eyes. "Well, how you did it, I mean." She felt a blush rise to her cheeks and smirked slightly to make up for it. "It's good to see that you've found a way to use bloodbending for good."

Her expression froze on her face before she managed to clear it and sit up. It was a struggle, but he was there, supporting her. Finally, she succeeded in leaning against the carved headboard, the pillows pressed against the small of her back.

"It took a lot out of me."

His smile fell. She missed it.

"Last night wasn't a full moon, Katara. You shouldn't have been able to do it at all." She looked away from him, biting her lip. She had hoped to keep this from him for a little while longer. "Just how strong are you?"

"Stronger than anyone, Zuko," she whispered, her voice shaking. "Stronger than Master Pakku. Stronger than Aang. Stronger than any other waterbender or Avatar who has ever lived."

He stared at her and she met his gaze. Gold battled with blue, the way they had so often fought in the past.

"You've been gone for so long," he said finally, quietly. "You've been training all this time?"

She nodded, ignoring the rush of dizziness that swept over her as she did so. "Six years of constant training, developing new techniques, experimenting..."

"And it brought you right back here." The smile was back, the familiar half-smirk she hadn't seen since she was fourteen. "Right back here, to save my life again." He took her hand in his, pressing his lips gently to the back of it. "I guess it must be fate."

"Well, you saved me from the pirates," she quipped, her eyes twinkling with mischief. "I couldn't keep owing you forever."

He laughed; it scratched in his throat.

"Feel up for some breakfast? There are some things I think we should discuss, but only after you've eaten."

Feeling was already seeping slowly back into her limbs, making her skin tingle and her stomach clench from lack of sustenance. She nodded.

* * *

a.n.

What does Zuko need to discuss? How did Katara get so strong?

Read on.


	2. Ripple

**Drown**

_Zuko is the Fire Lord in a period of civil unrest; Katara has become the most powerful waterbender in history. Zuko's life is constantly in danger; Katara is strong enough to protect it. Zuko can't trust anyone; Katara can't trust herself._

a.n.

This chapter is WAY longer than I expected it to be. I'm really sorry about that, but I couldn't find a good place to cut the conversation. Hopefully, this will give you a good idea of what's been happening in the Fire Nation while Katara's been away. There's also a lot of foreshadowing, which you won't really understand until far later in the story. I'm telling you now so that you'll speculate and it'll drive you nuts.

I don't own ATLA.

But I do own this lovely 13-inch MacBook Pro.

* * *

**.02.  
****.Ripple.**

The Fire Lord and his old friend ate in companionable silence for some time. It was a delicious meal - scrambled lizard-chicken eggs tossed with fine spices, strips of bacon (from which animal, she couldn't possibly guess) fried to perfection, an entire basket of perfectly toasted bread with a wide array of spreads, and an entire jug of mango juice - and Katara found herself incapable of coherent thought while she practically stuffed her face. The past six years had not treated her kindly, food-wise, and she had used up so much energy in the healing the night before that her body needed an over-abundance of sustenance to make up for it.

Zuko finished first and busied himself with pouring her another glass of mango juice - he had always remembered that it was her favourite - while he watched her gorge herself. He smiled faintly. It had been too long.

"So," he began, sliding the glass back to her and leaning back in his chair. "You might have noticed that people have been trying to kill me lately."

She gulped a large mouthful of the pale orange liquid before answering. "No, I didn't pick up on it at all." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. She sounded more like her brother than he'd ever heard. "Honestly, Zuko, this is just ridiculous! I've been here for four days and there have been three assassination attempts."

He smirked, his eyes dancing with mirth. "You should have seen last week. There were two or three every day."

Katara put her utensils down on the table forcefully, her expression hardening. He recognized the lines of fury in her face and felt his heart speed up slightly in fear.

"That isn't funny!" she hissed, glaring at him. The remnants of her delectable breakfast lay dolefully on her plate, immediately forgotten in the face of her wrath. "I don't understand how you're not dead yet!"

"Mai has been doing an excellent job of keeping me alive." He held his hands out as though trying to placate her, though in reality he was preparing to protect himself. "But for every thirty or so attacks she stops, one usually manages to get through."

"I don't really like those statistics." She slumped slightly and stabbed her fork into another slice of bacon. He relaxed.

"Neither do I, but it's not Mai's fault."

She swallowed. "I never said it was. But you should have more than just one person organizing your protection. If Mai were subdued - not that I've ever seen that happen, but it _is_ possible - you'd be a sitting duck, especially if they know chi blocking."

He bit his lips, nodding. "I know. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. The attack yesterday wasn't something we'd ever been expecting. None of the healers in the castle can deal with a poison that strong."

"No one could have healed it." She said it quietly, but instead of pride in her voice, there was sorrow.

"No one except you." He looked directly into her eyes, but she wouldn't meet his. She pushed her Fire Nation china plate away from her and ran a hand through her undone hair.

"I'm a little different."

He smiled. "I can tell," he said reassuringly. Then he added, with a laugh: "It's almost scary."

Her expression froze, the same way it had back in her room earlier that morning. Then she looked down at the blue silk dress she was wrapped in. "I like this gown." The change in subject was swift and unexpected. He wanted to talk more about her bending, to learn how she had become so powerful, but the forced smile on her face stopped him from bringing it up again. "Why do you have Water Tribe-style clothing in your palace?" she asked, fingering the material gently.

It truly was a lovely piece, she mused. It was the same style of dress that Yue wore as a Spirit, strapless and shoulderless with the sleeves starting just above the elbow. It was Northern Water Tribe formal princess attire in the deeper blue colours of the South. It reminded her of the last time she had seen Yue - she felt a sharp pang in her chest at the painful memory - and of the family she had left behind.

"I've kept wardrobes fully stocked with Water Tribe stuff for you and Sokka, Earth Kingdom clothes for Toph, Suki, Ty Lee, Haru, and Teo, and a few sets of Air Temple monk robes for Aang. Just on the off chance that any of you would visit." He said it casually, as though it hadn't been a big deal; but she could tell that he had painstakingly prepared for her eventual return. "Everyone else has. Just not you." A sudden surge of guilt coursed through her. When she had left to train, she hadn't thought about her friends at all. Now, it seemed as though her absence had harmed them far more than she could ever had expected.

"It's beautiful," she breathed trying not to let her pain leak into her voice.

Zuko gave the tiniest blush before stuttering: "It's a little out of style; I had it made four years ago."

"It doesn't matter. Thank you." She sent him the most blissfully thankful smile she could muster. He smiled back, the edges of his scar crinkling up with his eyes. She felt tension seep out of her skin at the sight of it. She had missed his smile over the years. How many times had she closed her eyes and tried to remember exactly what it had looked like? Her memory couldn't come close to the real thing.

"It wasn't a problem." His smile changed subtly into a smirk, as it always did when he was proud of himself. "Anyway, back to the matter at hand. You being the strongest waterbender that ever lived definitely has its advantages."

"So you'd think." She said it in barely a whisper, so completely under her breath that he didn't hear it. He continued, totally unaware of the reaction he'd stirred in her, of the pain she kept just behind her eyes.

He leaned his elbow on the table and searched her face earnestly. "What sort of arrangements do you have lined up?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you have to go back home soon? Are people expecting you? Sokka, Aang, your father?"

Her brow creased slightly. "N-no," she stuttered, swallowing anxiously and looking away. The mere mention of her family and the boy she had left behind made her throat tighten. "I didn't tell anyone that I was coming back. I figured I'd stop in here on my way back home, to see you."

"So no one would miss you for a while?" _Any more than they already do, I mean._ He didn't append his thoughts to his statement, not wanting to remind her that she had abandoned them all. Part of him wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her, scream at her, ask her why she had left without a word, what she had been thinking when she went off alone, whether she had honestly thought she could return after six years without anything changing - but he didn't. He quashed that part of him, because that wasn't his job: that was Aang's job. Aang, the Avatar; Aang, Katara's first love; Aang, the one who had spent six brutal weeks in the Fire Nation palace sobbing his eyes out after his girlfriend disappeared without a trace; Aang, who had given her up for dead a year and a half before she'd miraculously appeared on Zuko's doorstep, unabashed and entirely changed.

"I guess not..." She felt her stomach bottom out as she said it. It was true: no one would miss her, because no one but Zuko and Mai knew she was even alive. She was certain that Sokka and her father and Gran-Gran thought she was dead. They may have even had a funeral for her. She shook her head a fraction of an inch to each side before turning back to her host. "Zuko, where are you going with this?"

"I want you to stay. Here, at the castle." He coughed awkwardly before completing the phrase. "With me."

Katara's mouth dropped open. She gaped at the Fire Lord, who gazed coolly back at her, waiting for her response. A maelstrom of arguments whirled through her mind, colliding with one another and making her head spin from the sheer force of her surprise. Stay here in the Fire Nation capital? In the Fire Lord's palace?

While she was caught up in her own internal whirlwind, the door to the elaborate breakfast room opened and Mai came in. The Fire Lady-to-be was dressed to the nines, as was to be expected: her hair was done up, not in her usual meatball-like style, but in the traditional Fire Lady manner, the front sections of her hair swept gently back into a small bun while the rest tumbled like a sleek back curtain to the small of her back. The bun was secured with the same pin Azula had worn: pure gold and shaped more like a leaf than fire, the symmetrical design coming to a point at the top - the mark of a Fire Nation princess.

"Have you asked her yet?" Mai asked, her voice as monotonous as ever as she walked to the table and stood beside her fiance. He took her hand and looked up at her, giving her a blinding smile before answering.

"I just did." They both looked at the other woman. Mai's forehead crinkled very slightly in concern.

"Katara?" she asked, hesitantly. "Are you okay?"

Katara opened and closed her mouth several times, like a fish out of water, before she finally managed to regain control of herself and ask, rather harshly: "What do you mean, 'stay'?"

Mai let a tiny smirk grace her thin lips. She pulled out the chair beside Zuko and settled in it, reaching across the table to snag a piece of toast from Katara's breakfast plate. "Yesterday really proved to us that we need a good healer," she said thought a mouthful of bread. "If you hadn't been here, Zuko would most definitely be dead right now, and the Fire Nation thrown into even more chaos than it's already in."

The waterbender tilted her head to one side, her eyebrows furled in confusion. "You have to remember that I've been... out of touch, I guess you could say, for six years. You have to explain what's going on. I thought the Fire Nation would be peaceful, now that Zuko is Fire Lord."

Mai sighed and put her elbow on the table, resting her chin in her palm. A strand of midnight velvet hair somehow managed to flip itself up onto the table and curl up, looking like a pool of oil on the smooth wooden surface. "It _was_ peaceful... for three years. Then, things changed."

"The people of the Fire Nation welcomed the change from violence to peace, at first." Zuko elaborated, grabbing the strand of hair and twisting it between his fingers as he spoke. "They were sick of losing their sons and husbands and fathers in the war, and they missed visiting the other nations. Everything was great, until some of the more negative side effects kicked in."

"What sort of negative side effects?" Katara asked, picking up the fancy crystal glass and cradling it in her hands.

"There's been quite a bit of economic trouble since we stopped conquering other nations." Zuko's lips tightened. "A lot of our money during the war came from the spoils of war."

Katara understood. "It was stolen."

"Exactly. So the war was almost completely financed by the Earth Kingdom."

"A little bit of dramatic irony, if you like that sort of thing." Mai commented, dryly.

"But when you lost that money? What happened?"

"All of a sudden, we needed to take more money from the people to afford things like schools, government, and maintenance. For the first few years my personal coffers were overflowing, so I spent most of it on the Fire Nation."

"Leaving us almost destitute, I might add."

Zuko let Mai's hair drop from his fingers and glared at his fiancee. "If anyone in a country should be poor, it should be the ruler," he snapped, exasperated. "He has to know what it feels like in order to govern for the good of all the people." Katara felt heat rising in her chest; affection for her friend blossomed in the pit of her stomach. He had matured so much over the years, become exactly the sort of leader he was meant to be.

"Luckily, I stopped him from going overboard. We operate on a very modest budget, now. Nothing like what Ozai and Azula were used to." If Mai noticed the way Zuko froze when his father and sister were mentioned, she made no sign.

"But when that money ran out, we had no choice but to tax the people."

"Barely."

"Mai, please."

"I'm sorry, Zuko, but we only increased the taxes by half a percent. Forgive me if I don't exactly see how that's a problem."

"Some people use that particular half of a percent to live, after all other expenses are paid." Katara said quietly. She didn't want to ignite more fury between the two; this was obviously an argument they'd had before, on several occasions. But Zuko was right.

The Fire Lord nodded. "Indeed. The less fortunate people suffered greatly. And that's how the discord started."

"But it hasn't stopped?"

"It's gotten worse, if anything."

"Once people get it into their head that they're being mistreated, it's hard to get it out." Mai snapped, her delicately refined features twisting into something reminiscent of a snarl. "The mutters of discontent get louder and louder, regardless of how much open discussion, honesty, and transparency there is between us in the palace and everyone else. And those who missed the glory days where the Fire Nation ruled everything fed on the mutters, helped them grow."

"The assassination attempts started a year after the taxes were put in place. Two years ago." Zuko added, obviously seeing the consternation on Katara's face as she attempted to do the math.

"It started off slowly." Mai tossed her hair back over her shoulders. Katara caught a glimpse of several knives hidden in her sleeve. "There were only two attempts in the first three months. Then it slowly got worse and worse."

"I never realized just how many people wanted to kill you, Zuko." Her tone was dry and bored; Zuko could tell that she was mimicking Mai and had to stifle a short laugh.

Mai, who had obviously noticed nothing, responded. "That's the thing, really; we don't think the attacks are disconnected."

"You mean...?"

Zuko took up the narrative. "We believe it's a single cell of operatives, all working under the control of one leader."

"Who?"

"That's the problem. We don't know." Zuko's voice turned into more of a growl than ever. Evidently, he wasn't fond of being uninformed. "Nor do we know how many there are, or how much they know about what goes on in the palace."

"It was dumb luck that you were here yesterday, really. It was the first time they've ever used poison. Which makes us think that they're either getting desperate or more confident."

"Neither of which are exactly pleasing options." Katara considered.

"So you understand the problem. You understand why we need you to stay." He sounded almost desperate - as though he _was_ desperate, but trying very, very hard to hide it.

Katara nodded. "I do understand. I'll stay... but only under certain conditions."

"And those are...?"

"Number one: you must always been within reach of either Mai or I at all times, regardless of the circumstances. I'm mean _constantly_, Zuko. Even while you're asleep."

"Well, Mai and I share a room already, and we can move your quarters to just down the hall, so there are no problems there."

"Good. The second is that you have to trust me and do everything I say. If I tell you to run, you run. If I say 'hide', you hide. If I tell you to dress up like Suki and do the Phoenix Flight with a pineapple, you're in makeup and holding the fruit before I've finished speaking." Mai let out a bark of laughter and Zuko's eyes widened in horror. He knew it was just an outrageous example, but he couldn't shake the feeling that she might actually order him to do so, just to abuse her power. "Do you understand me?"

He swallowed before nodding slowly. "I understand," he said, wondering how much of his dignity he was signing away to this crazy Water Tribe girl.

"Perfect. And there's one more thing."

"What is it?"

"I'd like you to find me a nice salon where I can get a new hairstyle."

Zuko grinned. Considering how messy her hair was since he'd barely given her enough time to get dressed before dragging her to breakfast, he could understand her final request. Besides, she had spent the last six years of her life in conditions that were probably not conducive to proper hair care. Most of the waterbenders he knew trained in oceans or rivers or - in extreme cases - under Arctic waterfalls. He didn't want to think of how she had lived while becoming the most powerful waterbender in history.

"Consider it done." He pushed back from the table and got to his feet, stretching slightly and sending a tiny wisp of flame into the air from his fingertips. "I'd better go start getting those things arranged. I'll see you both later." He kissed Mai gently on the cheek and grinned at his friend before leaving the room.

There was silence; a very uncomfortable silence. All the tension from the moments just before the healing came rushing back between the two women. The air was thick with it. Then Mai broke the stalemate.

"Katara - I'm sorry for yelling at you yesterday. I said some terrible things and I didn't mean them." She hung her head.

"There's nothing to apologize for. I'm sorry for not telling you my plan from the beginning."

The Fire Nation woman raised her golden eyes to meet the blue ones across the table. "I promise I'll trust you more from here on in."

Katara shrugged, unconcerned. "You'll have to, if we're going to keep your fiance alive."

* * *

a.n.

I know that this is very Maiko at the moment; I'm sorry about that, but I can't do anything about it right away. As much as I hate_ Maiko,_ there's a crapload of angst and depression that I have to get out of the way before I can make the Zutara work.

Also, I hope you noticed what I did there to get potential Aangst out of the way (came across that term in a fic recently and it was great. I don't remember which fic it was, so if someone knows, tell me so I can credit it properly). Aang thinks Katara is dead. Oh noes.

Just where _did_ she go to train, anyway?

Read on.


End file.
